Press Release

January 21, 2016 – Sean Kelly is delighted to present a solo exhibition of new paintings by Havana-based artist Alejandro Campins. An opening reception will take place on Thursday, February 11, from 6:00 to 8:00pm, the artist will be present.

This will be Campins’ first solo exhibition in the United States and the first time he is presenting works exclusively focused on the Cuban landscape. His practice is informed by a singular, painterly vision. Ambitiously drawing on history, architecture and the collective memory of his home country, Campins mixes media — oil, watercolor, pencil — to create hauntingly evocative, atmospheric paintings inhabiting a metaphysical space between reality and fiction. His enigmatic canvases allude to the anachronistic poetry and surrealist beauty of Cuba’s changing cultural landscape.

When asked about this new work, Campins stated, “I am interested in the idea of impermanence and how it manifests itself in nature and its relationship with architecture. The rural and urban landscape reflect the mental state of society, in these works I approach scenarios which for me have an "anonymous" aspect, sites that have lost their identity and express disinterest, transformation and the failures of ideologies.”

Alejandro Campins graduated from the Academia Profesional de Artes Plásticas “El Alba” Holguín, Cuba in 2000 and from the Instituto Superior de Arte, Havana, Cuba in 2009. Since then he has multiple solo exhibi-tions at galleries in Spain and Cuba and has been featured in numerous international group exhibitions, includ-ing Q & A the IDB Cultural Center Gallery in Washington, DC (2015); Cuba Contemporaine. Arte de la grande ile des Caraibes, Le Centre culturel du Manoir, Cologny, Geneva, Switzerland (2013); MEETING Havana Cul-tura: CHAPTER I // GULLIVER, at the Freies Museum, Berlin, Germany (2012); Inside confluences, the second edition of Contemporary Cuban Art at the National Hispanic Cultural Center, New Mexico (2009); and Far Far Away, Co-Lab, Copenhagen, Denmark (2008). Campins work was featured at the 11th Havana Biennial, Havana, Cuba (2012), the 12th Cairo Biennale, Egypt (2010), and Portugal Arte 10 EDP biennial, Lisbon, Por-tugal (2010). Campins was a finalist for the Farber Foundation’s inaugural Young Cuban Artist of the Year award in 2015.